About the Institute

Big Data for Health: The Vision of the UCL Institute of Health Informatics is to conduct high quality research that leverages big data and health informatics approaches to improve health at local, national and international levels.

Our cutting edge programmes of research span the areas of Discovery Science, Precision Medicine, Learning Health Systems, Public Health and Citizen Driven Health. These programmes of research are underpinned by: excellent secure data infrastructure; adding value to key linked data resources to make data research-ready; development of multidisciplinary methodological expertise; engagement with patients, the public and health services; strong local, national and international academic partnerships and excellent multidisciplinary training programmes.

Electronic strategies for healthcare research and implementation are very important globally. Harnessing the unique national electronic data assets for the UK’s 65m population offers unprecedented opportunities to advance understanding of human diseases. Located firmly in the Digital Health Corridor of London, IHI is committed to taking e-health research and education to a new level. Our novel approach, setting e-health data and analytics firmly at the centre of what we do to address substantive clinical questions across the whole translational cycle attracts talented research staff and students from across the world, and offers a vibrant, supportive, inter-disciplinary culture of research and training.

IHI is an academic department of UCL within the School of Life & Medical Sciences, Faculty of Population Health Sciences. The Institute serves as the UCL base for the Farr Institute London node of the national Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research.

What we do

Information technologies are revolutionising health care and we work to develop and evaluate systems, and to using the new streams of data that result. Central to our work are electronic health records (EHR), which offer unique opportunities for the advancement of medical research, quality of care and outcomes. In order to create a more effective research e-infrastructure and exploit the wealth of UK EHR for research, we created an EHR-based research platform and unique set of resources including:

data from primary and secondary care linked to disease registries covering 10m people

We have also built a body of research into how EHRs are used in clinical practice, and how we can design EHRs to work better. We strive to understand how people interact with records systems.

Our interdisciplinary, highly-skilled staff bridge fields including data science, bioinformatics, epidemiology, psychology, computer science and information governance, carrying out world-class research and providing students with the tools they need to carry out research in today’s rapidly evolving field of health informatics.

The Institute has a number of collaborations and partnerships with organisations and companies worldwide and welcomes the opportunity to work together to deliver then benefits of our research to patients and public.

IHI is strongly committed to the Athena SWAN Charter by embedding a truly inclusive culture as a core value of the Institute and upholding a philosophy of equal opportunities for women in a number of ways.